A trench may be romantic, but it makes a thankless home. These trenches were deep and narrow, and quite safe from rifle fire, and pretty secure from shrapnel. Of course now and then there were accidents. A fellow would keep his head too long at a loophole and get sniped, or a bullet would come through a badly filled sandbag and settle some poor devil’s account. It would mean the call: “Pass the word for stretcher-bearers: stretcher-bearers wanted on the right!” and the men gambling at the entrance would hurry along. There would be a few minutes’ delay while the dead man was wrapped up in a blanket or waterproof sheet, and put on the stretcher together with his pack and other belongings, and then began the tiresome journey to the beach. Someone would get hold of a shovel and cover up the bloodstains, and that was the end of the affair. You might hear them say: “Smith’s gone. Bad luck, weren’t it? A bullet copped ’im in the ’ead. ’E wasn’t a bad bloke.” Sun and thirst, indifferent food, and a dog’s sleep leave little energy for regretting.
The trenches zig-zagged all the way, that, part being lost, the enemy’s fire could not enfilade for any distance. Where fellows had not stretched blankets overhead by pinning them to the walls with bayonets, there was no spot of shade, the sun stared in on to the baked earth and searched out every corner. Sometimes one discovered attempts at comfort—seats, little fireplaces, shelves for ammunition, rifle racks dug out of the wall, pictures from illustrated papers. But nothing really disguised the horror of these homes. You could not make space where space was not; you could not blot out the sun, nor make nectar of stewed tea, nor a Lord Mayor’s banquet of army rations. You could not charm away the flies in their hosts, nor pretend you had no use for Keating’s Powder. You could not dream of a bank of violets and let the breezes climb in through the loopholes.
For anywhere here one might push up the periscope and stare upon the strangest, stillest scene. It was like peering into some magic world, far, far remote from every day. One found a stretch of barren heathland, bearing such poor bushes and herbs as the pitiless sun allowed; a field of rusty browns and faded greens, and here and here brighter spots where hardy heath flowers gathered. Frail, sickly winds wandered there, causing no grass to bend its head.
Death was the farmer of that tranquil field. Look where they lie, tumbled over in every shape, all as still as still may be. Mark how the green uniforms hold the sunshine, and fail to give it back; and mark the dusky faces hideous with decay. Mark the swollen bodies. Mark the rotting eye-sockets. By night and by day shells pass over them; but ever sleep on the silent company.
We came one morning to a new post: it lay beyond our beat. The dead were thick outside and the stench sickened. A charge had swept over here the week before, up to our very rifle muzzles. Bodies lay within a few yards of the parapet. I was twisting the periscope this way and that to get a fuller view, when I picked up a fellow right before me, and so near that I was hard put to it to get the periscope down on to him. Finally I made a crack in the sandbags and looked at him face to face.
He had been crawling up, and at the last moment our man had fired point blank. In the centre of his forehead was a black hole, plain as a man might wish to see. He had made no farther movement; he had died on the moment; and now he was blackening and swelling, as the fierce suns poured over him their beams. He would swell and swell, and presently down towards the earth he would sink again, and his clothes would flap wearily whenever a wind passed by, and the rust spots would creep about his rifle. To die at the mouth of your enemy’s trench—to die with your rifle at your side—a soldier may count the end a fair one, and maybe this fellow’s soul had passed the gates of Paradise. And yet I must be thinking of that woman far away who cried on Allah for his safe return. I stopped up the crack in the bags, and stepped down again on to the trench floor.
Many a time one might pass this way and see never a sign of war other than men polishing rifles, nor hear a sound of it beyond the crack of a sniper at a loophole, or a thud of an enemy bullet chipping the baked parapet. You would find men shaving, and men cooking little dinners; men reading old papers and writing love letters. You would see men sleeping; and men naked to the waists, bending close over shirts, where among the seams and other crevices, with thumbnail in place of horn and hound, the hunt went forward. You might come on fatigue parties, armed with spade and sandbag, strengthening the parapet, or building new traverses, or tunnelling towards the enemy. They were all dirt and sweat and thirst, these parties; yet, the job over, there was no wash for them; they pulled on their shirts and lay back and tried to forget things in a sort of dog’s doze. Grumbling was rife, and I have heard men pray for a bullet to end them, and there were mysterious accidents of a bullet through the hand or the foot, yet all the time there was heart in us. You would ever find men eager to lie of what they had done before being fool enough to join in the affair, and others ready to tell you what they were going to do when they got back. And everywhere was conviction of final victory.
The trenches were not always galleries of peace. The enemy would take evil fits and shell us. We minded this little when they sent only common shrapnel; but in course of time big guns were brought up, which was a very different matter. There was always an evening battle, for, did they leave us at peace, we were at pains to stir them up. And then there were the big attacks; but they are another story.
Other people had observing stations along here—the New Zealanders had one, and the Indian gunners one. Always we stopped for a few words in passing. The Indian men were friendly fellows. You would meet them suddenly, a white officer and two or three native telephonists. “Good day, sir.” “Good day.” And then Australian and Indian would salute, and we would come to a standstill.